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2024 Dorothy Shoemaker Award Winner: 1st Place

The Dorothy Shoemaker Awards celebrate literacy in all its forms. 

This year's first place prize winner is Mehetapja, by Johanna Kiik

Read the short story with comments from this year's judge, author Catherine Bush.

Mehetapja

by Johanna Kiik

Mai should have timed the kill better, considering that the sun sets close to nine in late August. The gravel is cold and cuts into her bare feet, and the night’s darkness is doubled with the moon shaded by clouds. Her chest rattles with each breath. She ran the length of the street, but her lungs tickled at the end of the lane and she wheezed out a long series of coughs. Mai was never big on running.

A flashlight, Mai is convinced, can make the forest look worse at night. When camping as a child, the trees hung tall around their campfire. Dad’s tent was enclosed deep in the forest’s shrubbery. In her own small tent, Mai would sit cross-legged, staring out of the bug net listening to her own breaths, in and out, and the mosquitoes festering at the door. On occasion, she would pull out her mini flashlight bought at the convenience store, and flash the light in brief intervals. Morse code-esque. S-O-S. The front line of trees would illuminate. They cast a shadow on everything behind them, hiding all but the front lines and buzzing insects in front of her. Her breath would hitch, and she’d turn it off quickly. Afraid of anything that jumped, and especially anything that was still, her father used to say. She’s still not quite sure if she’s gotten over her fear of the dark.

Down the road there is a crossroad, and past the crossroad, there is a small village with the Lakeshore motel. Lakeshore is a quick and dirty business, for teenage hookups and infidelity. Mai was a high school sweetheart of the now-owner Oliver. He was shy then, quaint with skinny long limbs that made him a gangly fellow. Her chest aches when she thinks about him now. She moved out as soon as she’d gotten married. It all happened too fast to give him an explanation, and she didn’t particularly want to speak with him again. It hurt back then, all that pulsing guilt.

Oliver has grown burly. Thick arms, with red cheeks that have filled in the baby face he once had. Mai’s two scarves make her neck warm when speaking to him. His teeth are bared awkwardly in a customer-service smile. He clearly doesn’t recognize her, and goes off in a spiel about room sizes and accommodations. The service is spotty out here, so the wifi is semi-functional, and the rooms have a bed and ensuite bathroom, but no kitchen, and the hairdryer is functional but please don’t use it in the evening to keep volume down, and feel free to call zero on the landline if you need room assistance, and there are plenty of restaurants in the area, not that you are planning to stay for long, and have a great night. Mai pays in cash and thanks him. He still blushes like a teenager.

The single room is run-down, frozen in the eighties. The sheets are floral, with a rosy-beige background. There is a small lamp on the wooden nightstand, which casts a yellow light across the room. It all reminds Mai of her grandmother’s house, falling asleep on the upholstered couch at family parties. Her mouth waters at the thought of those small caramels she used to keep in the crystal bowl on the living room table.

She settles in for the night, taking off the layers of clothing she packed on in an effort to reduce physical bags. Beneath all of it, she has her satin slip. A lovely gift from her in-laws, it is a deep red and has pretty lace frilling on the bottom. Although her mouth tastes like the stew they’d eaten for dinner, and slightly metallic from chewing anxiously on her lips, she doesn’t brush her teeth. She is too tired, and the sheets are too appealing.

It is still dark, that endless midnight dark, when the phone rings. It is an old thing, must be from the eighties, and each ring is a rhythmic vibration. Brr, Brr, Brr. Brr, Brr, Brr. Mai’s pinkie twitches involuntarily beneath the sheets. A funny little urge, that is, to want to answer. Aloud, she mumbles quietly to herself, “Hello, Mai speaking.” The phone continues ringing, and she feels her heartbeat quicken. “Hello, Õunapuu residence, Mai speaking.” She recalls learning about the heart in class, what feels like centuries ago. There are actually three parts to the pump; a quiet lub, a small valve closure, a dup, the aorta’s closing, then the quiet shh of blood rushing through the arteries. Lub-dup-shh. Lub-dup-shh. Brr, Brr, Brr.

“Hello, Õunapuu residence, Mai speaking.” Mai is in bed. The phone is ringing. Her heart pounds. She turns her head right, towards the phone, and his back is turned to her. She is cold all over, her fingers and toes numb, and the back of her throat burns. He’s in his old pyjamas, the one’s she bought him for Christmas when they’d gotten married that first year. They’re blue, a light blue, with dark trim around the cuffs and neck. Sweat-stained, the set has yellowed around the neck. It's a stain she never could wash out, even with a baking soda rinse. His back is turned to her, and she can see the hair curling at the nape of his neck. Quickly, she holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut, then reaches out and touches the small of his back.

The sheets are crumpled in front of her. He is gone. Mai blinks hard. She grabs the duvet and pulls hard, yanking it back to reveal the fitted sheet beneath it. There is her small kitchen knife, a paring knife for fruits and the like. It is stained with something dark and sticky.

Mai’s stomach lurches. She kicks off her sheets frantically, scrambling to relieve herself of this warm heat on her body. Stumbling to the washroom, she heaves deep from her gut. It burns up her throat. She stares down in the toilet, stench wafting up. It is tinged red.

Mai takes a deep breath. She composes herself, pushing her shoulders back and pushing back up to her feet. She flushes the toilet, and watches the vortex swirl and clear up back into fresh water. She scrubs her hands meticulously at the sink with the floral soap, working her way up to the wrists and carefully cleaning every trace of red remaining under each fingernail. She swishes with the water twice: once to get the smell out, and once to get the taste out entirely. Subtly, she peers in the mirror. There are purple bags beneath her eyes, and her skin is dull. She smiles at herself, making sure there is nothing left in her teeth. They are yellowed, but clean.

By the time Oliver returns to his post at the front counter at 5:00am sharp, there is a small tip of $10 and the key to room two sitting sedentary on the desk.

The peak of morning rises through the trees. Mai leaps over a branch, across matted grass and bushes, as the sun’s glow opens up the once shadowed trees. Suddenly, there is a squelch beneath her feet. A biting cold sends a jolt up her spine, and she whips her head down. A creek, clear water with minnows darting above mud and sea grass, flows around her ankles. She’ll need a new pair of socks, she thinks. New socks, and a new name, and a new place to run to. Mai scans her surroundings, looking for something, anything close.

Her eyes catch on a small house just through the trees. A window on the right yields nothing but darkness. The bedroom, Mai thinks. On the right, the window reveals a small stove light on. It illuminates a figure, pacing back and forth about the room. There is something on the stove. A pot steams and simmers, and the figure takes a handful of leafy greens and sprinkles them inside. She paces again, back to the counter. She chops. Chopping, chopping, chopping, slicing her tomatoes and dill and chicken breasts, then she lifts up everything on her kitchen knife and slides them all into the pot. She pauses. The pot bubbles. The figure gently holds the knife. She checks subtly behind both her shoulders, as though looking for people, for ghosts, in the house. Slowly, she turns back. She turns the knife over in her hand once, then again.

Mai sways for a moment on her feet. She was never a runner. She sighs, then sits down where she is. She settles her head down in the creek, lying on her side. The water cradles her like she is fragile. The current rushes beneath her ear, and her hair drifts up with the creek’s flow. She slowly blinks, the sweet lull of sleep pulling at her eyelids. She glances in the right window once more. The figure catches eye contact. Her eyes widen, and she stumbles back.

Mai smiles.

--- 

This short story of a woman on the run pulses with suspense. Mai flees to a rundown motel on the edge of a wood, where an unanswered phone rings, and a bloody knife appears in the bed. Like Mai, the writing is on the move, vivid, sensual, keeping us close to Mai’s fervid thoughts, pressed up against her actions, offering both mystery and just enough detail to sense what she’s done and what’s she about to do.

 

Catherine Bush, author

2024 Dorothy Shoemaker Awards judge

 

 About the Dorothy Shoemaker Awards

The Awards began in 1967 as a Centennial project, created by Dorothy Shoemaker, Kitchener Public Library's Chief Librarian from 1944 to 1971.

In 1996, when government funding for the awards was eliminated, Ms. Shoemaker made a significant personal donation to ensure the awards would continue. In 2000, Ms. Shoemaker passed away at the age of 94. However, her legacy of support for aspiring writers continues today through her ongoing endowment.

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Kitchener Public Library thanks the Waterloo Region Community Foundation for their ongoing financial support of this long-running contest.